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Prime Minister Abe was compelled to get into China’s grill about the Senkakus dispute in a Washington Post interview setting the table for his meeting with President Obama, claiming the PRC had a “deeply ingrained” need to challenge neighbors over territory. The PRC's Ministry of Foreign Affairs laid into Abe: People’s Daily ran with the... Read More

China's Assistant Foreign Minister, Hu Zhengyue--who seems hold the bash-Japan brief--expressed umbrage that some Japanese officials somewhere had made inappropriate statements to the media concerning the Diaoyutai/Senkaku dispute, Apparently there will be no fence-mending meeting between Wen Jiabao and Naoto Kan at the ASEAN get-together in Hanoi What China is probably really angry about is... Read More

Update: I am willing to grant that China disrupted rare earth shipments to Japan over the Diaoyutai/Senkaku incident. That's a distinction I should have made in the Asia Times article, and I regret not doing so. Given the quota system/smuggling structure of China's rare earth trade, it would be easy to slow or stop exports... Read More